Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Letter to Lizzy- Fourteen Months

Dear Lizzy-

Right now, you are standing next to me "reading" The Very Hungry Caterpillar, which is something that you do frequently. You have absolutely no interest in me reading it to you, but you like to babble about the pages for several minutes at a time, and occasionally point to different items saying, "Dis?"

You also have started trying to say bird, and LOVE the bird artwork in your nursery. Some other new things you're saying this month are "cup", "out", you also try to say "spider" when we're singing (which comes out "eye-dah") and surprisingly, "I waked up!" The last one totally threw me for awhile, but you say it every single morning when I go to get you out of your crib.

Another one of your favorite activities is to sing "The Itsy Bitsy Spider", and you're getting really good at the hand motions. You love singing in general, and love it when I let you watch a DVD we have of kids singing songs and doing the motions. The DVD has both Spanish and English, so we try to alternate between the two, but you don't seem to understand that the songs are the same. For example, you don't do the hand motions on the Spanish version of Itsy Bitsy Spider.

In the last few days, you've also reached another milestone in terms of blocks--you're now interested in stacking them instead of just banging them together. It's still a work in progress, but you're getting better at stacking them every day.

You also LOVE it when your auntie Kait posts videos of your future-husband-to-be, Jaxon. Any time we sit down to the computer, you come peek around the screen to see if we're looking at your buddy. I am so excited for them to come visit in May--I think it will be a hoot to watch you and Jaxon play together!

One thing that's been hard this month is sleep. I'm not sure if you have more teeth coming in or what, but we've gone from being able to lay you down when you're tired and you being able to put yourself to sleep, to giant screaming battles at every nap and bedtime. More than once, I've just ended up rocking you to sleep. I have mixed feelings about this, but sometimes it sure is nice to snuggle with you sweet girl!

I've also noticed that you're really starting to understand most everything that we say, and that I'm starting to be able to reason with you. There have been a couple of times where we've been at church and you're throwing a temper tantrum because you can't run around wherever you want. I've told you that you can either calm down and snuggle with me, or we can go home and take a nap. Both times, you calmed down almost immediately. You also often bring a book over to read when asked, and are starting to help put your toys away when asked.

I've also noticed that you're starting to find ways to get around the "rules"--for example, we've started doing "quiet time", where I lay a blanket on the floor with some books, and you practice sitting quietly until the timer goes off. I always tell you that your bottom needs to stay on the blanket until the timer goes off. Well, the last time we practiced quiet time, I noticed that you were scooting the blanket all around the room with your bottom. You looked at me like, "WHAT?! My bottom is on the blanket!" Ha!